Friday, November 04, 2011

Terranomics

David Rothkopf over at Foreign Policy has a good list of 20 Things the G-20 could focus on achieving. Here's a taste from the introduction:
But the new reality for the United States is it can't bully anyone into action or make problems go away with a sweep of its check-writing pen. Nor, for that matter, can the Chinese, despite the size of their reserves. The Europeans will have to play a central role, and the rest of the world's leading countries will have to collaborate. Indeed, a central irony to this entire crisis is that though it looks like a debate about how tightly linked European countries wish to be, it is actually a demonstration that virtually all the world's countries are already linked far more tightly than any electorate would willingly approve in a national referendum. The markets have engineered the integration without benefit of public consultation, and it is now up to people everywhere to pay into this system of someone else's devising -- one which serves the interests of global bankers rather better than it seems to those of average citizens, lofty rhetoric about rising tides aside. (While rising tides may lift all boats, those without boats are left to sink or swim.) 
Several heresies are mentioned, including a global central bank and a Tobin tax. In related news, Bill Gates is the latest sleb to support a Robin Hood/ Tobin tax.